Read Online The Black Prince: Part I by P. J. Fox - Free Book Online Page B

important meeting.”
    She licked her lips, this time in trepidation. Those jet orbs seemed to bore into her, to claim her even more thoroughly than he already had. She had no notion, now, of what he was thinking. He could do that: shut her out. She couldn’t do the same, of course; she remained as open to him, at all times, as if he’d sliced her open from gullet to groin.
    “Yet even so,” his tone turned speculative, “I find myself distracted. By a naughty, needy little vixen. Too needy to wait her proper turn. And so,” he added, “she shall pay the price.”
    There was the merest hint of—something—in his voice.
    Her husband might not feel proper emotions, but he did have a sense of humor. That he found the situation amusing came clear through their bond. She relaxed slightly. He turned on his heel, walked over to the sideboard, and poured himself a drink. A drink he didn’t need, but he enjoyed the taste of wine. And he’d learned, over the course of his span, the importance of aping his contemporaries. There were enough rumors about him as it was.
    He took a sip from his cup, and stared out the window. The snow had started up again. Isla waited.
    “I’m missing an appointment right now. With the head of the furriers’ guild.” He paused, reflecting. “He’ll wait.”
    Unspoken came the thought that a wait—and preferably a long one—would do the man good. Isla had never met him, couldn’t have picked him out on the street, but knew in that moment that he was a pompous and overblown ass. Tristan occasionally toyed with the idea of eating him. What held him back was the fact that the man’s second was even worse.
    Isla found herself smiling slightly.
    With quick, businesslike movements, Tristan removed his tunic and then went to work on the fastenings of his shirt. First at his wrists, then at his neck. He still hadn’t turned from the window.
    When he did, he was naked.
    Isla’s heart turned over in her chest. Her breath caught. There was no denying the fact that he was simply the most magnificent specimen she’d ever seen. And while she’d never seen a man in a full state of undress until her wedding night, she’d seen many shirtless. Toiling in the practice yard, or in the fields. Their rippling, sweat-slicked muscles had quickened her heart then. But Tristan…there were no words to properly describe Tristan.
    He had the broad, sculpted shoulders of a true bowman and arms just as strong, the muscles rippling as he moved. His chest, too, was broad, tapering to a waist that was not so much narrow as without spare flesh of any kind. His stomach was like smooth river rock. His was the physique, from head to toe, of a man who’d spent hour after punishing hour in the practice yard and on the field and in the hunt. Whose every square finger was made, morning after morning, to justify its purpose.
    She’d watched him in the practice yard, too, with the other men. As he stripped off his own shirt, tossing it aside as though the expensive linen were nothing. The regime of a true soldier was no light training, to be undertaken in full dress. Men emerged overheated and sweat-soaked from the practice yard even now, surrounded by drifts of snow.
    She’d chewed her lower lip slightly as he twisted and turned, thrusting with a quarterstaff or a practice sword. Admiring the suggestive demarcation between torso and leg, that she liked to run her fingers down. His breeches hung low on his hips, the wool stretched tightly over the bulge of his manhood.
    “I appreciate,” he said mildly, “that I’m able to put on such a show.”
    She blushed crimson. All these weeks—moons, now—and she still wasn’t used to their connection. To the fact that he knew
everything
. Knew, of course, when she felt herself grow warm thinking of him. The fullness of which revelation had somehow not dawned on her until that moment.
    She dropped her gaze.
    She felt his finger on her chin, raising it. His eyes studied hers,